Interior design majors are learning to use virtual reality tools earlier than ever, with sophomores and even first-year students here at NJIT working with the technology as a way to gain an edge for their careers. The crux of the plan involved 14 sophomores in a design studio course developing virtual walk-throughs of cafés this semester throughout the entire design process, as instructed by School of Art + Design Director Glenn Goldman, with each student using an Oculus Rift headset and a high-end desktop computer.

Plenty of fictional works like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein have explored the idea of swapping out a brain from one individual and transferring it into a completely different body. However, a team of biologists and engineers has now used a variation of the sci-fi concept, via computer simulation, to explore a core brain-body question.

Here you will find a weekly listing of updates and announcements for members of the NJIT campus community. Announcements are to be submitted through the form found at https://forms.gle/V6PBxUy5b3jkErMc8 or by your area vice president to Deric Raymond, director of content planning and intelligence, in the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Those submitted by each Thursday will be included in the following week's Updates and Announcements email.

After a table saw severed the top of his right index finger, Adam Zanellato, a 20-year-old cabinet-maker at the time, had to relearn basic hand maneuvers, such as how to write and hold a fork. There were no affordable prosthetics on the market to help him regain dexterity. Several years later, he still found it hard to pick up coins from a table.

Anthony Schuman is Professor of Architecture in the Hillier College of Architecture and Design, where he has taught for 40 years. He typically teaches a design studio plus a seminar class each semester. He is currently leading an upper-year undergraduate “options” studio addressing three adjacent parcels in Newark’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Last fall, he offered an elective seminar called “Envisioning Newark”, which takes students off-campus each week to meet leaders in the public, nonprofit, institutional and corporate sectors.

Donald J. Reifer ’69 is recognized as an agile thought leader and a leading figure in the fields of software engineering and management. He has more than 40 years of management experience in industry, academia and government. He is skilled in program/project/product management, development, metrics, measurement and change management. He has led major agile enterprisewide initiatives, headed process improvement efforts, built businesses, managed major programs and changed the way organizations did their business.

They represent a sizable segment of NJIT’s student population — about a quarter — and come from around the country and the world to attend the university and acquire advanced skills to secure successful professional careers. Indeed, graduate students are pursuing degrees in a range of academic disciplines through a variety of instructional formats, from traditional classroom or face-to-face learning, to online and hybrid (combines online and face-to-face) learning.

Quantum computing will be offered as a new course for computer science graduate students beginning next fall. This marks the first time the subject is available outside of a special-topics course or independent study in the Ying Wu College of Computing here at NJIT.

U.S. News & World Report has released its 2021 rankings for the nation’s top graduate schools, with NJIT ranked among the best for graduate degree programs in engineering. The university moved up two slots this year to No. 87 — up 24 slots in the past five years — and has been included on the distinguished list since 2003.

NJIT's robotics club just stamped its ticket to the world championships tournament of a top-level league, despite competing as underdogs this season after all of its top members graduated last year. Chief engineer Yichao Zhang and lead programmer Dale Nacianceno — the former a senior, the latter a freshman — are leading the Highlanders to Louisville, Ky. to play in a tournament comprising up to 92 teams, after qualifying with a victory at a College of Southern Maryland tournament in February.